On November 13, 2015 at approximately 4:20 PM ET, a set of coordinated attacks shook Paris.

At approximately 5:00 PM ET, the USAGov Contact Center, handling calls for the Department of State, received its first call about the attacks: An American woman was shot in Paris. Her worried mother had no way to reach her.

Content marketing is everywhere and you're hearing more about it every day—but how do you do it well?

While content marketing can take many forms (articles, infographics, videos, and more), it shares a common purpose: providing useful content to attract new customers to your product or service. At USAGov, customized email messages to our subscribers represent one of our most powerful content marketing tools.

A fortuitous twist of fate led a Global Communications major with a focus in Public Diplomacy to become the acting program manager for the Digital Analytics Program (DAP). Tim Lowden, learned early on that “life can’t be scripted and that nothing’s ever going to follow the exact path you set.”

At USAGov, we’re constantly evaluating the programs we operate to ensure that they’re still meeting the needs of our users.  In some cases, this leads to a decision that our resources can be better spent elsewhere and that we should decommission a product.  This is never an easy decision, but given the rate of change online, it’s an important part of ensuring that we’re using our resources in the best way possible to help the public find government information and services.

Last summer, Kids.Gov revamped its presence on Pinterest in an attempt to find new ways to connect with its followers.

The Marketing Team set out to learn more about our audiences and the kind of content they like. Despite being a difficult platform to navigate, we set lofty goals for ourselves and developed a timely strategy to pin everyday.